Most social impact stories work the same way. Meet Sarah. Here's Sarah, in her own words. The person we helped is both the main character and the voice.

That breaks down fast in some services. A refuge. An adoption service. A mental health line for teenagers. The person can't be named, shown or quoted, and there are good reasons they may never want to be.

Organisations usually go one of two ways. They water the story down until it could be about anyone, or they drop it and lead with numbers. Neither works. A vague story moves nobody, and a number with no person in it is forgotten by the end of the meeting.

There's a third way. The person is still what the story is about. You change who tells it.

(Whether you're allowed to tell the story at all is a separate question, and I covered it in Edition 7. Here, take it as settled.)

When someone else tells the story, the easy mistake is to let them take it over.

The support worker who stayed late. The volunteer who answered the call. The organisation that stepped in. Before you notice, the story is about how good you are, and the person it started with has turned into the thing that happened to the hero. Readers feel admiration for you, not concern for them.

So a narrator is a window, not a star. They can say what they saw. They can't be the reason it turned out well.

Here's the test. Ask what the narrator did in the story that the person didn't. If the answer is "the important part", rewrite it. The change belongs to the person. The narrator just saw it.

I'll use one invented example throughout: a lunchtime drop-in at a secondary school, run by a mental health charity.

The person who was there. A worker, carer or volunteer describes what they saw. You get closeness and detail. The risk is the hero problem, because the narrator is right there in the scene. So they describe, they don't rescue. "They sat by the door for three sessions and didn't say a word." Not "I worked with them until they opened up."

The moment before. Start where someone reached out, not with what happened to them. "In the fourth session they asked whether anything they said would be passed on to their parents." There's nothing identifying in it, and it holds attention. But if you stop there, the reader sees the worry and never the change. Carry it on a few lines.

The pattern. What happens across many people. "Most pupils arrive in the first fortnight of term and sit by the door. The first thing they ask is whether their parents will be told." It's the safest of the four and it's true. The danger is that it goes abstract. A pattern with no single moment in it is a statistic, so keep one real detail that's true for most people.

The empty chair. An object, a place or an absence carries the story. "The chair by the door was the only one anyone sat in for the first month." It's quiet and it can be very strong, but readers miss it if what you describe isn't specific.

Here's one told by the person who was there. It's the drop-in, with a support worker writing a case study for a funding report. It's invented, and so is every detail and number in it.

Look at what's in it. The support worker is telling it, and it starts at the first session, not with the pupil's history. What changed is specific: they asked for something they needed, got it, and went back to school more often. The name, school, age and what they talked about are all left out, and nothing is missed. In a real story, use your own figures.

Now run the test. What does the worker do that the pupil doesn't? Wait, and explain what stays private. The pupil does everything that changes: they ask the question, they keep coming, they ask for the room, they attend. It passes.

Here's the version that doesn't: "Our counsellor worked patiently with the pupil, built their trust and taught them coping strategies, which turned their attendance around." Same facts. Now the counsellor did the important part, and the pupil has become someone it happened to.

You don't have to use a single one. Choose by what the story needs to do. If supporters need to feel what it's like, try the moment before. If a funder needs to see scale, try the pattern.

You end up with a default, and the default is usually the worker as hero or the story made vague. Both are decisions you made without noticing. The narrator should be one you chose.

I haven't said much about this yet, so here's the short version. It's for charity and social impact leaders.

You can explain your work to a friend in two minutes. Then you open a funding form, or get five minutes with a donor, and it comes out flat.

Over four weeks, we'll build your core story: one clear account of what you do, what changes for people, and why it matters. It isn't a one-off story for one bid. It's the story that sits underneath every funding application, social media campaign, donor appeal and impact report, so you adapt it each time instead of starting from scratch.

I asked people on my list who'd paid for storytelling training before whether it helped. Four in eleven said it hadn't. They left with ideas, and ideas don't survive a full diary. So this is built around your own work, with time to do it and honest feedback. It's my first cohort, so I can't promise it will suit everyone, but I've tried to build it around what they told me.

Each week there's one 90-minute live session and an optional co-working hour, and the main sessions are recorded. The weeks run in order: find the story, tell it with care, fit it to a real funding question, then say it out loud.

It starts on Monday 9 November, it's live online, and there are twelve places. It costs £375 including VAT. Three places are held at £180 for organisations with an income under £50,000 a year. If that's you, reply to this email and let me know you're interested.

Places open on 19 October. Joining the waiting list is free, with no commitment, and I'll email you when they do.

This prompt checks who's telling a story you've drafted. You paste your story. It tells you who the narrator is, runs the hero test, and shows you two different narrators with what each would gain and lose.

It has four limits built in. It won't write the finished story for you. It won't invent anything about your organisation or the people in it. It won't make anyone in the story more grateful, more changed or more useful to you than your own account says. And if your draft can't be told through another narrator, it says so, rather than giving you a weaker version.

Paste it in cold. You don't need to prepare anything.

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You don't need to make these stories vaguer. You need to change who's telling them.

Pick one story you've been holding back. Choose the narrator. Run the hero test.

If the narrator is the one who fixed things, start again.